Simon's Return
by Shutterbug5269
Summary: Spoilers for 6x05 "Only Time Will Tell" assuming Simon Doyle actually is a time traveling anthropologist as seemed to be implied by the episode. With a twist.
1. Chapter 1

**Simon's Return**

New York City  
Office of Temporal Services  
October 22nd, 2035

* * *

Simon Doyle stepped back through the temporal field. His primary mission had been a success, Deschile had been saved, the present as he knew it had been spared the calamity that the Garret Ward had been sent back to set in motion. Speaking of whom, he would have to go back and roll him up. Try to clean up the mess that had been made.

One of the nice things about time travel, now that he knew whom Ward was, they could check the time stream for anomalies and figure where he first entered the 21st century and stop him before he got started. If nothing else, get close enough to him to plant a temporal tracker so they can yank him back to the present. Find out who he is working for. There were so many extremist groups tied to the fascists from the energy wars who were still active.

He had preserved the timeline, as much as would possible. His personal mission however, the one minor thing he wanted to change.

He had tried to prevent more than just the major temporal incursion, he had wanted to do so much more than that. He had met Richard Castle...and Kate Beckett easily enough, but too many things had gone wrong.

He had been caught at the crime scene, so she had seen him as a suspect, and then as a nutcase. Nothing he said had even made a dent in her after that. She wouldn't take him seriously. Richard Castle might have believed him, but he was following Kate's lead, so he wouldn't listen either. Revealing his real last name would only have made them more suspicious of his motives.

He had to try. Had to try to prevent the personal tragedy that came later.

She was waiting for him when he came out of processing.

"I'm sorry, mom, I couldn't get her to listen." he said, his head bowed with shame, "Once I was caught at the crime scene, that was all there was to it. She shut me down whenever I tried to talk to them."

"I know, Simon, I know, you did the best you could."

Senator Kate Beckett pulled her eldest son in for a massive bear hug. She had hoped to spare Rick the harm that came years after that incident.

Pi had been a plant by the fascists...sent back in time to insinuate himself into their lives, get close to Alexis. When she was a junior senator, years later, he struck. They had sought to influence her vote on the energy bill placed before her in the senate, and had threatened her family.

Alexis was the only member of her family not under her direct protection. She had refused a protection detail of her own, because the secret service made Pi nervous. When she had refused to be swayed, to be pressured into voting against the energy bill, they made good on their threat.

Pi attacked Alexis in the bedroom the two of them shared. Beaten and tortured her so savagely over the course of three days that she had needed surgery, scarred her so deeply emotionally that she had been in therapy ever since. She was only now beginning to recover. It was why Richard Castle stopped writing detective novels and moved to serious literature.

Simon remembered as a teenager, when they would go to see her how she would cry every time she saw him. She had been pregnant with Pi's baby and had miscarried because of what he'd done. Simon wasn't allowed to kill anyone in the past, he had sworn an oath to do no harm to the timeline. But he had wanted to track the man down and kill him himself while he had been there.

Now Simon Doyle Castle wouldn't be able to approach his parents again, not before it was too late. And short of a DNA test to prove who he was his mother in that time period would likely never believe him.

It was a hard pill to swallow. His older sister had deserved better.


	2. Chapter 2

*_*Author's Note ** _

_There, I hope you guys are happy. I filled in the gaps in my story. This is it though, as I have two other stories to finish and this was supposed to be a one shot._

_Enjoy._

* * *

**October 21, 2035**

**One hour prior to departure**

Simon Doyle Castle was going over the last minute preparations to depart on his first solo trip into the past. He knew he was probably overdoing it. He was carrying double the amount of memory storage for the global energy conference he was visiting 2013 to document for his graduate thesis, not to mention three tricorders (they had a much longer technical name, but sci-fi geek ran on both sides of his family tree) with him in case one got lost or damaged.

He wasn't concerned about losing one, they had been designed to look like they had been cobbled together from junk. Most technology nowadays was miniaturized to the degree that the truly active components would hardly be recognized, much less seen for what they were. They were set to only function with his biometrics, regardless.

It always made his father sad when he got into these sorts of tangents, however, such as over-preparing, studying obsessively or taking on multiple activities, no matter how much Richard Castle tried to hide it. Grams (God rest her soul) in full denial mode, said he got his determination and drive for excellence from his mother, but he knew his father was comparing him to a younger Alexis.

Of the three "_Beckett triplets", _(they were each born a year apart, but dad like to call them that because they were so similar in appearance) his father had always noted with some melancholy how very much like his older sister he was. His father meant it with love and pride, emulating Alexis Castle was nothing to be ashamed of, but always with a hint of sadness too.

Simon had adored his older sister, almost from birth. Her long, flowing red hair had captivated him and drawn his attention since infancy. (mom told him this often) He had followed her everywhere when he was a toddler and had always been the first to come running whenever she came to visit.

Until the day she stopped coming.

* * *

His sixth birthday party had been the last time he would see her for four long years. He had thrown a fit that night and been sent to his room when Pi arrived to walk her home. He hadn't wanted her to leave and had begged and pleaded with her to stay the night, or just one more hour...one more minute. But he was sent to his room to cool down, and by the time he did, she and Pi had left.

She had never been the same since what had happened during the following three days. The three days his parents _never_ told him about. He had had to hack into the NYPD database, using his mother's access code to find out what "that man" had done to her, and that Pi had threatened to hurt him in her place to keep her from attempting to escape.

The word "Pi" would never be spoken aloud in the Castle household again, not even the math term.

For years, Simon blamed himself for what had happened to her. If only he hadn't thrown a tantrum or had been a better, more well behaved child, she would have stayed. She would not have gone home with the man who hurt her. He remembered crying his eyes out three weeks later on Christmas Day when she wasn't there. He had spent that night in his parents' bed wrapped up in his mother's arms, an inconsolable wreck.

* * *

He was ten before she was deemed to be stable enough to handle being near children.

Not that she would have ever harmed him, her therapists and even his parents had been dead certain of that, but with the loss of her own child at Pi's hands, and her delicate emotional condition they thought it would be detrimental to her own recovery to have small children near her before then.

Her red hair had been cut into a shoulder length bob, and she was doped to the gills, but she seemed to recognize them. His younger siblings, James and Johanna had cowered behind their parents, seemingly afraid of their older sister. He was the oldestn of the three and was expected to set the example, so he tentatively walked up to her, Monkey Bunkey clutched in his hands like a peace offering.

She took the aging stuffed monkey carefully from him, whispered his name and gently touched his face before he lowered his head into her lap and cried. He whispered how sorry he was, for what, he hadn't understood, as she combed her hand absently through his hair. Having endured the unendurable to protect him.

* * *

As time wore on, she was finally allowed to come home. He was one of the few people, aside from their father, whom she would let near her when she had one of her panic attacks, manic episodes, or deep depressions. Sometimes his very presence in the room, or on the vid-phone was enough. No one could explain it, least of all him, but he seemed to have a definite calming effect on his older sister. One her therapists had been quick to capitalize on.

It had also been good for him too, to be able to help her. Allowing him to finally shed most of the lingering guilt he had heaped upon himself. Guilt that firmly belonged on the shoulders of another.

* * *

Pi, as it turned out, never stood trial for what he had done. He had been shot down in the street when ESU tried to apprehend him later that year. The attempted take down had turned into a running gunfight three blocks from the apartment he had holed up in. By the end of it, three cops had been killed and three were seriously wounded.

Captain Ryan had not had to tell the sniper twice to take the shot that finally put him down.

* * *

**Shortly before Temporal Inversion**

An hour before departure his mother came to see him in the "clean room" where he changed into attire suitable for 2013, divested himself of any tech that was not necessary for recording the energy summit for his master's thesis on the energy wars.

"Simon, there's a minor temporal incursion that I would like you to try and fix while you are there."

As much as his mother was trying to keep this looking businesslike, he knew all of her tells. All of his father's too for that matter.

"How minor, mom, and where?" he asked "you know my time there is going to be tight."

"Alexis" she replied. The one word that could stop him in his tracks.

"I was always curious how I could never get a line on him, how a guy like him was able to travel from Amsterdam to Costa Rica without any viable source of income, and how he never seemed to check out. Now I know why."

"He's from here. I finally got a line on him. We can't do such a small time jump to keep him from going, but if you can find me in the past, get me to put INS on him, or do it yourself, get him deported before she moves out of the loft with him..."

"I'll try, mom. I promise." Simon replied, he had left himself ample time to see the sights, New York had shrunk considerably after the flooding of 2020.

"Simon, right around that time, I advised your father to let Alexis go her own way, to not fight her about moving in with Pi. When everything in my gut was telling me he was bad news, just not in the way he turned out to be."

Simon could tell this was difficult for his mother to talk about, her carefully controlled composure slipping right before his eyes, her lip trembling as if she might burst into tears. She composed herself for a moment and continued.

"We kept it from the three of you, as much as we could, but after Pi did what he did to her...it very nearly split us up. He blamed me, for not taking his misgivings about him seriously enough and he had every right to. It took nearly a year of counseling to save our marriage."

Simon could tell this had been weighing heavily on her for a long time, she must have buried it deep. Now that he recalled, they had spent much of that time sleeping in separate rooms. She had been nearly as inconsolable as he had been that Christmas.

"It makes sense now," his mother continued, "why Bracken didn't try to stop me when I ran against him for his senate seat. Why he never really put up a fight in the entire campaign, never tried to have me killed. The fascists had gotten to him somehow, leveraged him out because they thought they could more easily control me, by threatening her."

"And I have a chance to stop it, prevent him from doing it to her." Simon replied.

Simon Doyle Castle was determined to try.

* * *

**Three days after Simon's return**

Shortly after his required three days being interviewed and debriefed by the NYPD time enforcement division, he was released, with the thanks of a grateful city. He was lauded publicly for averting a nearly catastrophic time line incursion. He even received a few offers from the NYPD to to attend the academy and train for a job as a Time Enforcement Agent. Shortly after things calmed down, the entire Castle clan gathered in the Hamptons to toast the conquering hero.

Simon, however felt like anything but a hero.

He had failed to stop Pi. Failed to prevent what happened to his sister. He'd had one chance to give Alexis back her life and he had failed her. He put up a brave front all through dinner, Lasagna, his favorite. He was unable to look his mother in the eye the whole way through the meal.

He knew his mother understood that he had no other option, but to make the choice he did. She had raised him with a sense of duty to a higher calling and deep down he knew he had done the right thing. That he had made the choice Alexis would have wanted and saved the world first. But he still felt guilty about it. Still felt that if he had been more experienced, more seasoned, better prepared when the madman had made his move, that he could have done both.

He excused himself and filled a plate for Alexis. She was mostly self reliant now, but she still had difficulties with large family gatherings, and had gone to her room shortly after they had arrived. She had promised to come out later, to congratulate him herself when Johanna and her triplets had gone to bed, but he felt the need to seek her out. He could no longer stand being slapped on the back by his father and called a hero, when he had failed his family so completely.

He tapped on the door to her room, and when Alexis made no protest he opened the door and stepped inside.

"Alexis?" he asked, making sure she was awake. She was off everything but the anti anxiety drugs and he knew they sometimes tired her out.

"Simon...hey...you didn't have to, I was coming out soon." Alexis whispered.

She never raised her voice anymore, was never openly defiant, or insistent, or even angry with anyone. It was like she thought she no longer had the right to stand up for herself. He was never sure if it was because of the drugs or from defying dad and being so completely wrong about...him. He figured it must be a little of both. He had long ago taken up the mantle of doing so in her stead.

He knew that if, God forbid, anything happened to mom and dad, he would be the one to take up her care and he wouldn't have it any other way.

"I'm sorry, Alexis. I'm so sorry." He began, Alexis's lips moved as if to interject, but she didn't say anything.

"I had a chance to fix this, make it never happen." Simon whispered in her ear, as his emotions got the better of him, "I tried so hard, but I failed you. I'm so sorry."

Alexis set her plate on the end table, as he broke down in tears, wrapped him up in a hug, and rocked him as tears filled her own eyes.

"It's okay, baby bear...it's okay...shh" she whispered. "I'm just glad you came home safe."

Even as he sobbed into his sisters shoulder as she held him, he resolved that someday he would make this right. He would accept the NYPD's generous offer to join the Time Enforcement Division, train hard, body and soul. He would put right what that man had done. Track the time inversion to it's source and be waiting.

When Pi arrives in 2013, he will be waiting, and there will be a reckoning.

* * *

**May 2nd 2013**

**Undisclosed Location in Costa Rica**

The time displacement effect receded around Sgt Pi Jorgensen of the Army of God. He knew that the future stepdaughter of Senator Beckett would be arriving in a few weeks and he had a very narrow window to establish his cover as an amiable loser. He was quite good at seducing women. He had two weeks to prepare for her arrival and another six weeks to get her to fall in love with him.

He had just begun to get his bearings when a shorter man in nondescript local clothing approached him. The man dressed like a local but something about him was...

His thoughts were scrambled when the full charge of a stunner scrambled his central nervous system, sending him tumbling to the ground, his arms and legs still twitching, no longer answering his commands.

"Pi Jorgenson, you are under arrest for a violation of section five dash nine of the Temporal Prime Directive."

Time Enforcement Agent Simon Castle stated coldly, as he pulled a Sig Sauer P-226 from his belt and pulled the trigger twice into his head

"Since you have chosen to resist arrest I have been authorized to use lethal force." he muttered in the direction of his corpse before dragging it into the jungle, away from prying eyes.

_Mission accomplished_. He thought to himself. Somewhere down the road, he hoped his six year old self had one hell of a birthday party and a Merry Christmas. He had paperwork to fill out.

The End


End file.
